Michael
J. Mazza is director of catechetics for the diocese of Sioux Falls, South Dakota
and a frequent contributor to Fidelity.

It is, by now, an all too common scenario: John and Mary Jones, lifelong
Catholics, have always dreamed of having their children graduate from the same
Catholic college from which they graduated. It is, for them, an honorable task
in service of a long-held family tradition; a sense of respectability and even
prestige comes with saying their kids went to a "Catholic school." So
John and Mary scrimp and save, and assisted by a generous financial aid package,
they proudly send their young adults off to campus in the fall.

It generally does not take very long before the family realizes that the
school is not what it once was. Campus liturgies are the artificial constructs
of feminist ideologues; theology classes deconstruct what little faith a modern
Catholic brings to class; drug and alcohol use among the students is widespread
as college administrators no longer even pretend to act <in loco parentis>;
visiting hours in the dorms are long enough to be occasions of sin for even the
most chaste of young adults, etc. etc.

John and Mary, as well as thousands of other Catholic parents in similar
situations over the past twenty years, have had to learn the hard way that the
relationship between many institutions of Catholic higher education and the
Roman Catholic Church is tenuous at best. Those institutions which lie at the
heart of the Church's mission of evangelizing a culture are, in these days,
often at war with the Church herself.

The mutiny of Catholic academics is one of the most serious problems
afflicting the Catholic Church in the United States today. The institutions that
should be educating Catholics to critically examine the categories of the
dominant culture have instead become the main vehicle by which Catholics are
indoctrinated into the sexual values of the liberal regime. The <US News and
World Report> reported recently (10/4/93) that a 1992 survey of students at
19 Jesuit-run schools found that 60 percent of the freshmen favored legalized
abortion, up from 47 percent in 1988. A UCLA study found that 42 percent of
freshmen at Catholic colleges approved of premarital sex provided the couple
"really liked each other." Since Catholic higher education also
provides the next generation of Catholic leaders, the insurrection within the
seed beds from which future bishops, priests, sisters, and lay leaders will
arise is especially troubling. To the extent that those institutions continue to
produce graduates incapable of articulating a complete and coherent vision of
the Catholic faith, the chances for authentic Catholic renewal, especially in
the area of catechetics, will remain remote. As was documented by Msgr. Michael
J. Wrenn in his 1991 book <Catechisms and Controversies>, the educational
establishment in this country engaged in a blatant effort to sabotage the
Catechism of the Catholic Church by publicly condemning it at a symposium at the
Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. only
weeks after the <sub secreto> drafts were circulated among the U.S.
bishops. Much of the catechetical malaise in this country can be traced directly
back to the destructive efforts of directors of religious education and pastors
who have been taught by people like those who sponsored the Woodstock symposium.
As Wrenn says:

One only has to leaf through The National Catholic Reporter's annual listing
of "Summer Listings" to note the kinds of courses typically being
offered to teachers and to note also the professors, too often open dissenters,
teaching them.... The system might as well have been designed expressly to
perpetuate a religious education establishment hostile to the authentic Catholic
tradition and the teachings of the Church's magisterium (p. 112).

The Cost Of Dissent

All this comes as no surprise to Pope John Paul II, one of the keenest
pontiffs of the 20th century. In his landmark encyclical <Veritatis
Splendor>, the former university professor makes clear that Catholic colleges
and universities have not been untouched by the errant theological and
philosophical tendencies of our age. The "Christian community itself,"
he writes,

has experienced the spread of numerous doubts and objections... with regard
to the Church's moral teachings. It is no longer a matter of limited and
occasional dissent, but of an overall and systematic calling into question of
traditional moral doctrine.... Thus the traditional doctrine regarding the
natural law, and the universality and the permanent validity of its precepts, is
rejected; certain of the Church's moral teachings are found simply unacceptable;
and the Magisterium itself is considered capable of intervening in matters of
morality only in order to "exhort consciences' and to "propose
values," in the light of which each individual will independently make his
or her decisions and life choices (Vs. #4).

The consequences of such dissent, the pope goes on to say, have brought about
"a genuine crisis, since the difficulties it engenders have most serious
implications for the moral life of the faithful and for communion in the Church,
as well as for a just and fraternal social life" (VS, #5). One wonders how
many vocations—not to mention souls—are lost because of widespread dissent
present in the Church today. It is certain that at least some of the reasons
behind declining church attendance, dwindling contributions from the faithful,
the increasing virulence of anti-Catholic propaganda in the media, and confusion
in the area of catechetics can be traced, at least in part, to the disunity
within the family of God that results from theological disorientation at
Catholic institutions of higher education, which are, indeed, "born from
the heart of the Church." The Holy Father condemns such dissent within
these institutions, saying that "ever since Apostolic times the Church's
Pastors have unambiguously condemned the behavior of those who fostered division
by their teaching or by their actions" (VS, #26). The pope also labels
dissent on the part of the teachers of the faithful as one of the cruelest forms
of injustice, since it essentially is a form of theft committed against the
People of God, who are entitled by their baptism to receive from those entrusted
with any form of catechetical mission Catholic doctrine in its purity and
integrity (cf. VS, #113).

An Unwelcome Antidote

John Paul's concern for Catholic higher education was expressed most
eloquently in the Apostolic Constitution <Ex Corde Ecclesiae>. The
relatively short document is divided into two main sections. The first part
deals with identity and mission of Catholic institutions of higher learning,
which he says are "completely dedicated to the research of all aspects of
truth in their essential connection with the supreme Truth, who is God" (ECE,
#4). The pope is convinced that these institutions are "essential" to
the growth of the Church "and to the development of Christian culture and
human progress" (ECE, #11). The second part of the constitution consists of
a presentation of general norms that apply to "all Catholic universities
and other Catholic institutes of higher studies throughout the world." The
norms, though technically in effect since the first day of the 1991 academic
year, still await official implementation in the United States. The National
Conference of Catholic Bishops has established the <Ex Corde Ecclesiae>
Implementation Committee, which in 1993 circulated a proposed set of ordinances
aimed at providing "implementation guidelines that embody both the vision
and the spirit of <Ex Corde Ecclesiae>."

The proposed ordinances almost immediately drew fire from a number of
different camps. While a few commentators have charged the proposed ordinances
are "incomplete" and do not go far enough in fully implementing the
comprehensive vision of <Ex Corde Ecclesiae> other more numerous critics
have displayed considerably more disdain for the ordinances. While paying lip
service to the "vision" of <Ex Corde Ecclesiae>, groups like the
Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities (ACCU) warn that
"application of the ordinances could carry the American Catholic colleges
and universities back to the 1950s, when our institutions were more homogeneous
and operated outside the mainstream of higher education in the United
States." In a letter to Bishop John Leibrecht, chair of the Bishops' ECE
Implementation Committee, the ACCU urges that the "NCCB, individual
bishops, and American Catholic institutions" make "repeated
interventions with the Congregation for Catholic Education and the Holy
See" to stress the negative consequences of "the application of the
general norms of <Ex Corde Ecclesiae> and the proposed ordinances in the
United States."

In a November, 1993 statement, the Board of Trustees of the College Theology
Society recommended that "because of the uniquely and beneficially American
situation of our institutions, <Ex Corde Ecclesiae> remain the exhortatory
and inspirational document that it is. We urge that no attempt be made to
implement the Proposed Ordinances, which would undermine the identity of our
institutions and threaten their existence as Catholic institutions." The
CTS echoed the concerns of many others in Catholic academe in casting doubt on
the competency of the bishops to ascertain whether or not a theology teacher is
fit to teach, saying that "ordination and episcopal consecration do not
supply theological competence." Statements like these are really nothing
new, as even the authors of the <Commentary on the Code of Canon Law>
(Paulist Press, 1985) decreed that the canons on higher education did not really
apply to this country. "It is difficult if not impossible," the
commentators opined, "to apply the canons as such to such divergent
situations of the Catholic colleges and universities in the Fifty States of the
United States," claiming "it is evident that the canons are designed
for systems of higher education in situations considerably different from those
in North America." The canon detailing the need for "those who teach
theological disciplines in any institute of higher studies" to have a
mandate, given by the "competent ecclesiastical authority," (cf. #812)
is described as simply being "inapplicable in the United States." Holy
Cross Father Edward Malloy, president of the University of Notre Dame, went so
far as to say in February of 1994 that the "mandate" requirement,
expressed not only in the Code, but also in <Ex Corde Ecclesiae> (Article
4) and the proposed ordinances (#5 and #6), was "offensive to the Catholic
theological community" (<Origins>, 2/19/94). In a winter 1994 article
in the ACCU's <Current Issues In Catholic Higher Education>, author Fr.
William J. Rewak, S.J., president of Spring Hill College, approvingly quoted
Peter Steinfels, erstwhile <Commonweal> editor and current <New York
Times> religion correspondent and faculty member of the University of Notre
Dame, in warning that the identity of a school cannot be imposed by outside
authority. It must arise from the autonomous community of scholars itself, from
decisions made by trustees or governing boards, presidents, deans, students and
above all the faculty. Efforts by church officials, in Rome or elsewhere, to
solve questions of Catholic identity by rule or fiat are doomed to be
self-defeating.

The Door Is Opened From The Inside

The key to understanding the hostile attitude that many Catholic colleges and
universities seem to display towards bishops today lies in tracing the
historical roots of the conflict that has simmered since the 1960s. An
historical analogy might be helpful. In Germany in the 1870s, Otto von Bismark
and the Catholic Church were engaged in a struggle for control of the culture.
One of the main battlegrounds for this <Kulturkampf> were the schools,
those seed beds in which the minds of the next generation was being formed.
Fortunately, the Church presented a unified front against Bismark and his
"Enlightenment" agenda. Bismark, as a result, was forced to turn to
the disaffected and schismatic Old Catholics for assistance in his attempt to
control Catholic schools and seminaries.

In the <Kulturkampf>of the 1960s, however, the Enlightenment forces
came preaching the doctrine of sexual, rather than political, rebellion. They
also found the Church to be harboring more than a few quislings, and thus were
able to establish strategically important beachheads within the Catholic camp in
the form of contacts with key people inside some of her most important
institutions.

The Notre Dame Conferences

On October 10, 1962, the Population Council, a tax-exempt organization
founded in 1952 by John D. Rockefeller, 3rd granted the University of Notre Dame
$5,000 for a two-day conference in early 1963 to "bring together
representatives of different religious and other points of view to discuss
problems of population growth, with particular interest in exploring areas of
possible convergence in approaching these problems." The seeds for this
meeting were planted the previous spring, when on May 10, 1962, CBS aired a
documentary entitled "Birth Control and the Law." The show was widely
criticized in the Catholic media as essentially an extended commercial for
Planned Parenthood. Nevertheless, the appearance on the show of Notre Dame
Theology professor Fr. John A. O'Brien, C.S.C., did attract the attention of
some procontraceptive activists, who evidently liked what the priest from South
Bend had to say. In July of 1962 Cass Canfield, Chairman of the Planned
Parenthood Foundation of America and a board member of the Population Council,
invited O'Brien to a meeting with other "Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish
clergymen" to discuss, <inter alia>, ways in which religious groups
and the Planned Parenthood Foundation could engage in "cooperative thought
and action on these vital matters." Notre Dame president Fr. Theodore
Hesburgh's assistant, George Schuster, wrote back to Canfield offering to host
such a meeting at Notre Dame. Frank Notestein, then head of the Population
Council, was excited about the possibilities of strengthening that element in
the [Catholic] Church with which we have many common aspirations and a minimum
of differences." For this reason, Notestein urged that only certain kinds
of Catholics be invited to the meeting, i.e., those willing to work for a change
in the Church's teaching. The Conference planners wanted to avoid any appearance
of Planned Parenthood sponsorship, so Notestein nominated Hesburgh to chair the
conference rather than the more public (not to mention controversial, given his
connections with birth control) John D. Rockefeller 3rd.

The Ford Foundation assumed the funding for three similar conferences that
were held at Notre Dame through 1965. These also represented the efforts of key
people associated with the foundation establishment at helping that element in
the Church which agreed that Church teaching concerning contraception was out of
date and should be changed. The chair of the 1965 conference was a Catholic
named Thomas Carney, a Notre Dame graduate and trustee and vice-president in
charge of research and development for G.D. Searle Company, one of the biggest
pharmaceutical companies in the country. Cass Canfield, chairman of the Planned
Parenthood Foundation, was also in attendance at these conferences.

John D. Rockefeller, 3rd, one of the most influential promoters of population
control and contraceptive technology in the 20th century, was fully aware of and
a strong supporter of these conferences, even though he did not attend them
personally. His efforts at changing church teaching operated on a higher level
as well. During a 45 minute audience with the Holy Father in July of 1965, which
had been arranged with the assistance of Notre Dame University President
Hesburgh, Rockefeller tried to persuade Pope Paul VI of the wisdom of changing
Church teaching on contraception. JDR referred to both the
"overpopulation" problem and the recent introduction of the
intra-uterine device, which his Population Council had worked so diligently to
develop. Given the eventual ethical, medical, and legal impact of the IUD, it is
extremely fortunate that the pontiff was not persuaded.

If Paul VI was not convinced of the wisdom of lightening up on church
teaching, people like Ted Hesburgh evidently were. The impact of the
foundation-sponsored conferences at Notre Dame was significant. Following a
conference in the spring of 1965, the so-called "Notre Dame Statement"
was released in the fall of that year. The statement, which was given wide
publicity in the press, claimed the Church's teaching on contraception had
become "unconvincing," and that conventional arguments against
contraception "do not manifest an adequate appreciation of the findings of
physiology, psychology, sociology, and demography, nor do they reveal a
sufficient grasp of the complexity and the inherent value of sexuality in human
life." Furthermore, the conference attendees concluded (assembled courtesy
of the financial largesse of the Ford Foundation, not irrelevantly) that there
was "dependable evidence" to conclude that "contraception is not
intrinsically immoral, and that therefore there are certain circumstances in
which it may be permitted or indeed even recommended." Finally, and most
significantly, the members of the conference concluded that "in matters of
public policy within a morally pluralistic society, Catholics, while rendering
witness to their beliefs, need not for reasons of private morality oppose
governmental programs of assistance in family limitation."

Msgr. George W. Casey, writing in the <Boston Pilot> on October 9,
1965, declared in an article entitled "Birth Control is Waiting in the
Wings," that "a committee of responsible moral theologians and
sociologists meeting under Catholic auspices have made a public declaration
giving endorsement, however qualified, to contraception." The fact that in
the popular mind Notre Dame was at least as Catholic as the pope, and that the
"scholars" who drafted the statement were not disciplined in any way
for their actions only added to the widespread confusion and disunity in the
Church.

Two separate, but related, events in the spring and summer of 1967 served to
further the divide between the Catholic church and her institutions of higher
learning that had begun at the University of Notre Dame in 1962 with the
foundation funded contraceptive conferences. In April, 1967, Fr. Charles Curran
was notified that his contract to teach at the Catholic University of America
was not being renewed. While the bishops on the University's Board of Trustees
said nothing publicly on the reasons for the non-renewal, it is clear they were
concerned about Curran's heterodox theology. After a media blitz by Curran's
allies and a general strike on campus, which, according to news reports,
involved some 6600 students and 600 professors, the bishops relented, and not
only rehired Curran, but granted him full tenure.

The Land O' Lakes Statement

In July of that same year, the retreat house of the Holy Cross religious
order in Land O' Lakes, Wisconsin hosted a meeting of 26 leaders of Catholic
academe from institutions such as Georgetown, Boston College, Seton Hall,
Catholic University of America, St. Louis University, Fordham, and the
University of Notre Dame. The paper drafted at this meeting, known as the
"Land O' Lakes Statement," read, in part:

The Catholic university must have a true autonomy and academic freedom in the
face of authority of whatever kind, lay or clerical, external to the academic
community itself. To say this is simply to assert that institutional autonomy
and academic freedom are essential conditions of life and growth and indeed of
survival for Catholic universities as for all universities.

The framers of the Land O' Lakes statement, which essentially represented
their declaration of independence from the juridical control of the Catholic
Church, also saw themselves as the true guardians of the Church:

The university should carry on a continual examination of all aspects and all
activities of the church and should objectively evaluate them. The Church would
thus have the benefit of continual counsel from Catholic universities. Catholic
universities in the recent past have hardly played this role at all. It may well
be one of the most important functions of the Catholic university of the future.

It goes without saying that the Land O' Lakes statement was never given
approval by Rome. In fact, in a letter of April 25, 1973, which he asked to have
attached to the document itself, Cardinal Garrone, Prefect of the Congregation
for Catholic Education, spoke of the need for two further clarifications to be
made in regard to the statement (these "clarifications" were evidently
never made). Garrone wanted an explicit statement by each university of its
Catholic character and commitment, as well as some assertion concerning the
development of instruments by which faith, morality, and discipline would be
safeguarded within these institutions. Furthermore, Garrone's letter concludes
as follows:

Although the document envisages the existence of university institutions
without statutory bonds linking them to ecclesiastical authority, it is to be
noted that this in no way means that such institutions are removed from those
relationships with the ecclesiastical hierarchy which must characterize all
Catholic institutions.

Undaunted by Garrone's caveat, the National Catholic Education Association (NCEA)
formally adopted the Land O' Lakes statement in 1976. Speaking for 223 Catholic
colleges and universities in the U.S., the NCEA stated that "a juridical
relationship between the Church and Catholic institutions in the exercise of
their proper autonomy" is not "desirable or even possible,"
though it did condescend to grant that "bishops and other Church leaders
can provide significant insights into the particular needs of service to the
local Church" ["Relations of American Catholic Colleges and
Universities with the Church," Occasional Papers (NCEA), II, 1 (April,
1976), as quoted in <How To Keep Your University Catholic>, Leonard A.
Kennedy, C.S.B., 1992, p. 541.

For over 25, the Land O' Lakes statement has functioned as a <de facto
magna carta> for Catholic universities and colleges in the United States.
With the publication of <Ex Corde Ecclesiae>, which the pope himself calls
a <magna carta> for Catholic institutions of higher learning (cf. ECE, #8)
it is now up to the bishops to specifically point out the inadequacies of the
Land O.' Lakes Statement and to wholeheartedly adopt the General Norms of <Ex
Corde Ecclesiae>.

Cutting The Umbilical Cord

That there are strong pastoral reasons for this course of action is
self-evident. On July 30, 1968, Fr. Charles Curran was again in the headlines of
an excited (perhaps even grateful?) media when he stunned the Catholic world
with his well-orchestrated press conference barely 24 hours after <Humanae
Vitae> was released, claiming, along with a significant number of professors
from Catholic University and other schools, that Catholics could dissent from
and disobey the moral prescriptions in the pope's encyclical. It is safe to say
in hindsight that Curran's action had devastating consequences for the Church
and society. Paul VI, it turns out, was nothing less than prophetic in his
predictions for what would happen if contraception gained widespread acceptance.
It could even be argued that the sexual revolution currently waging war on our
society would not have become so powerful had it not been for the subversion of
Catholic higher education, in which a few leading institutions brokered an
exchange of their freedom to pursue Catholic truth for grants from contraceptive
foundations, and eventually the federal government.

A little over 100 days after the <Humanae Vitae> protest, on November
21, 1968, Fordham University in New York officially severed its legal ties to
the Catholic Church. While this move was ostensibly made in order to procure
state aid, which had certain restrictions placed upon it by the Constitution of
the State of New York, the relatively small amount of money obtained seemed to
many observers entirely out of proportion, considering the structural changes
that had to be made within the institution itself. Attorneys W. Gellhorn and R.K.
Greenawalt, who had been commissioned by Fordham to determine what modifications
would have to be made if Fordham were to become eligible for state aid, issued
some rather striking norms. They recommended that Fordham stop referring to
itself as Catholic, describing itself in as secular a way as possible; that the
faculty should not have to be Catholic or even particularly sympathetic to
Christianity; that some non-Catholics be hired to teach theology; that most
crucifixes be removed from campus buildings; that non-Catholic religious groups
be allowed to use the university chapels, etc. etc. Since 1968, Fordham
University has been officially registered with the state of New York as a
"nondenominational" institution.

"An Internal Schism"

The situation in contemporary Catholic higher education was described very
ably by Rosemary Ruether in an article in the winter 1980 issue of the
<Journal of Ecumenical Studies>. She characterized the status quo as
being, "in effect, an internal schism.... The lack of consensus in the
Catholic church on basic theological and exegetical matters, has nothing to do
with academic disagreement and cannot be resolved on that basis. Fundamentally,
it is a schism between two magisteria, the magisterium of the professors and the
magisterium of the pope and the hierarchy. It is a power struggle, not an
intellectual debate." She then outlines the strategy that for nearly three
decades has been enormously successful in keeping some of the most important
Church institutions, i.e., their schools of higher learning, out of Church
control: "In short, one must use the liberal institutions of the secular
society against the illiberal practices of the monarchical church to limit the
latter's power."

Four years after Ruether's revealing admissions, Thomas Sheehan, professor of
philosophy at Loyola University in Chicago, wrote in the June 1984 <New York
Review of Books> that "the dismantling of traditional Roman Catholic
theology by Catholics themselves is a fait accompli.... [Those who] hold the
chairs, get the grants, publish the books and define the limits of scientific
exegesis and theology in the Catholic church today," according to Sheehan,
are all at odds with the magisterium of the Catholic Church.

It is clear that move of Catholic institutions of higher learning away from
the juridical control of ecclesiastical authority did not come about as a result
of dispassionate, scholarly, and theological research into the nature of the
Church. Rather, the hammer that drove the wedge between <sancta mater
ecclesia> and the institutions to which she had given birth with the help of
thousands of hard-earned dollars from millions of Catholic parents was little
more than a desire on the part of some institutions to rid themselves of what
they claim as the yoke of oppressive ecclesiastical control, all the while
indenturing themselves to a foundation-government complex that rewarded dissent
from church teaching with large sums of grant money. The treason of Catholic
institutions of higher learning has been nothing less than the sexual revolution
masquerading as academic freedom. The University of Notre Dame, so jealous of
its academic freedom <vis-a-vis> the church, was more than content to let
the Population Council dictate what kinds of Catholics were to be involved in
their birth control conferences in the 1960s. And Fordham, so wary of Church
intrusions into their day-to-day affairs, was the picture of obsequiousness when
confronted by the state of New York, which tied state grants to the changing of
the very nature and character of the institution.

"We Don't Need To Be Reformed"

If the publication of <Ex Corde Ecclesiae> was meant to effect a change
in this situation, it faces what can only be called an uphill battle. Shortly
after the proposed schema for the Vatican document on Catholic higher education
appeared, Fr. Ted Hesburgh of Notre Dame lamented in <America> magazine
that if the Church "can dictate who can teach. . . the university is not
free and, in fact, is not a true university where the truth is sought and
taught. It is, rather, a place of. . . religious indoctrination" (America,
11/1/86, p. 250). Commenting in a 1991 issue of Fordham's magazine, Hesburgh
noted his resentment with efforts at reforming the Catholic university: "It
is worth noting that the people who have produced these documents have never
created anything in Catholic higher education themselves....American Catholic
higher education is a success story. We don't need to be reformed."

Similar kinds of concerns are evident in the letter of the Association of
Catholic Colleges and Universities to the chair of the Bishops' Committee for
the Implementation of <Ex Corde Ecclesiae>. The ACCU bemoans the lack of
sensitivity to the "particular history and circumstances of Catholic higher
education in the United States" in the proposed norms, saying that
"ecclesial communion rather than juridical control" is their clear
preference in terms of the relationship between institutions and the church
hierarchy. In a "Synthesis of Comments" generated by regional meetings
of the ACCU, there was "wide-spread concern" that a stronger
relationship between the bishop and the institution would jeopardize "the
standing of these institutions in the higher education community in the United
States, their eligibility for accreditation, their compliance with federal and
state laws and regulations, and their continuing eligibility... for desperately
needed federal and state funding." They also ask whether or not "the
competent ecclesiastical authority" is "necessarily competent to judge
the competence of a theologian to teach," and warn that any efforts to
"gain control over lay theologians [or] control dissent on campus"
might make the bishops personally liable in civil court.

The letter of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities to Bishop
Leibrecht on <Ex Corde Ecclesiae> expresses similar anxieties. The
presidents of the 28 Jesuit institutions of higher learning in this country
expressed their alarm over the proposed ordinances, hinting that bishops might
leave themselves vulnerable to "civil law suits if a professor without a
mandate were denied promotion. If the mandate is also a judgment about 'probity
of life,' would bishops be open to civil suit if a professor engaged, for
example, in sexually inadmissible conduct?"

How legitimate are the concerns of the ACCU and the AJCU over issues like
accreditation, academic freedom, federal funding, institutional autonomy, and
discrimination lawsuits? Do they represent true concern for the Catholicity of
the Church's institutions of higher learning and the legal well-being of
individual bishops or are they a thin veil aimed at covering up their
not-so-covert operation to wrest from the Church her institutions of higher
learning Let us examine the issues one by one.

Accreditation

Anxiety over losing accreditation is often expressed by foes of <Ex Corde
Ecclesiae>, especially in light of the proposed norms concerning the role of
a bishop and a college or university in his diocese (cf. ECE, #28). The
influence of the bishop in college matters, it is feared, might be construed by
accrediting agencies as an undue influence upon the college and, even, an
encroachment upon academic freedom and institutional autonomy.

There is little data to justify this fear. As Dr. Kenneth D. Whitehead,
former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Higher Education Programs at the U.S.
Department of Education, pointed out in his 1988 book <Catholic Colleges and
Federal Funding>, none of the nearly 50 schools which had been censured by
the American Association of University Professors in 1987 for various offenses,
(e.g., the revocation of tenure) lost its accredited status. Moreover, since
accrediting agencies have historically been concerned with preserving
educational quality, they have not been unreasonably intrusive. Whitehead points
out, as one example, that the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools
supports "the right of an institution to pursue its established educational
purpose," and recognizes the responsibility of a given institution's
"governing board" to represent "the interests of the founders,
the supporting religious group, the supporting governmental agency, or other
supporting party."

If, however, accrediting agencies were to threaten to impose standards that
were inimical to the Catholic ethos, it would be very possible for the over 200
Catholic institutions of higher education in this country to set up their own
accreditation organization, as is their right under current U.S. law. The
Association of Advanced Rabbinical and Talmudic Schools and the Association of
Bible Colleges are currently recognized by Secretary of Education for
accrediting purposes. The nationally-recognized Commission on Recognition of
Post-secondary Accreditation also recognizes these groups, as well as the
Association of Theological Schools in the US and Canada. Thus, it clearly
possible for Catholic colleges and universities to create their own accrediting
body, should that ever become necessary.

Academic Freedom

Academic freedom, as currently defined by many in Catholic academe, is more
often than not a one-way street against the rightful prerogatives of the
Catholic church. Rare is the mention of the freedom of parents and students to
receive an authentically Catholic education from those church-related
institutions identified as such, and the freedom of the administrations of
Catholic colleges and universities to place certain restrictions on abuses of
authentic academic freedom. Such freedom is never an absolute right. A white
supremacist pushing Nazi ideology in the sociology department would never be
tolerated, for example, in an institution committed to the pursuit of truth.

There is ample evidence of administrations addressing such abuses, as in the
case of Cornell and Stanford, both of which dismissed tenured professors in the
1960s for having incited rebellious students to engage in illegal actions (cf.
Diane Ravitch, <The Troubled Crusade> (New York: Basic Books, 1983), p.
221) or of addressing the issue of academic tenure itself, as president
Elizabeth Coleman recently did at Bennington College in Vermont by firing nearly
one-third of the faculty the Board had deemed unqualified (cf. "Reality
Bites," in the <New York Times Magazine>, Oct. 23, 1994).

Federal Funding

In her response to the schema on higher education proposed by the Vatican in
1986, in the April 10, 1986 issue of Origins, Sr. Alice Gallin, O.S.U.,
executive director of the ACCU, cites two U.S. Supreme Court cases: the 1971
<Tilton v. Richardson> and the 1976 case of <Roemer v. Board of Public
Works> as proof that "favorable decisions regarding public aid to
Catholic colleges or universities are founded on a perception by the court that
the church does not control them." Gallin also claimed that "it is
virtually certain that such aid would be withdrawn" if the Catholic Church
were seen to be in control of Catholic colleges and universities.

This fear, though common, is also not supported by hard data. As was noted
above, Whitehead found that none of the 47 institutions on the AAUP's Censure
List suffered thereby from a lack of federal funding. Moreover, most federal
funding (more than 90 percent) goes directly to students and not institutions.
Even if federal funding for institutions became endangered, however, it would
not cripple most institutions, since, on average, it constitutes only about 15
percent of their total income. State aid to institutions, on average, makes up
about 3 percent of a given school's budgeted income.

Institutional Autonomy

The fear of Church "control" of Catholic institutions of higher
learning is problematic. First, the word "control" connotes images
which are more often than not caricatures of the authentic concern a bishop has,
indeed, must have, for the spiritual welfare of the faithful in his diocese.
Second, the fear of ecclesiastical control may lead institutions into a
precarious legal situation <vis-a-vis> state and federal authorities. If
Catholic colleges and universities were to abandon their legal ties to the
Catholic Church in favor of securing federal monies they might lose the
protection offered them by the Constitution as religious organizations.
Governments might, for example, force those institutions to pay for
abortion-related health coverage for their employees, or, if they have medical
schools, to actually perform abortions if the government deems the providing of
abortion by non-religious institutions as a civil right guaranteed to all
Americans.

Discrimination

The threat of lawsuits is also brought up with great regularity as an excuse
for not implementing the norms expressed in <Ex Corde Ecclesiae> and in
Canon Law. Significant in this regard is the case of <Kamehameha Schools v.
EEOC>, which involved a teaching candidate who was found to have been
discriminated against because of her religious views by two historically
Protestant schools. The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals reversed the ruling
of a lower court that had decided in favor of the schools, and the U.S. Supreme
Court, in agreeing not to hear the case, left open the possibility that the
criteria employed by the Appeals Court in the adjudication of the case could set
a precedent with national repercussions by which schools could be judged
"religious." Schools exempt from discrimination claims had to have,
according to the Court, 1) a governing body with clear religious ties, 2) a
clear "religious purpose," 3) hiring policies favoring teachers of a
particular faith, 4) admissions policies favoring students of a particular
faith, and 5) a curriculum that included substantial religious instruction.

In an <amicus curiae> brief filed with the Supreme Court in October of
1993, a group of religious organizations and colleges, including the Catholic
League for Religious and Civil Rights and the University of Notre Dame, argued
that the criteria used by the Ninth Circuit Court was excessively strict and
unworkable. While that claim might have some merit, the case shows the practical
danger of what might happen if a religious college or university does not assert
its religious character; lawsuits could be filed against these institutions by
disgruntled teachers who had been dismissed for one reason or another. If,
however, teachers are informed "at the time of their appointment" (ECE,
Article 4.2) of the Catholic identity of the institution and the consequent
expectations, the institution cannot be sued for discrimination.

This point was proved in a recent case described in the July 16, 1994 number
of <The Chronicle of Higher Education>. Donald Z. Scheiber sued St. John's
University in New York after he was fired in 1990 as vice-president for student
life. Scheiber charged he was discriminated against because he was Jewish. The
New York State Court of Appeals affirmed the right of religious colleges to
discriminate on the basis of faith in some cases, i.e., where a hiring decision
was "calculated by the institution to effectuate its religious
mission." The Court, however, ruled against St. John's in this particular
case because, in part, Scheiber's position was not identified by the university
as effectuating its religious mission and because St. John's advertised itself,
somewhat confusedly, as "an equal opportunity employer."

The fact that certain institutions may legally "discriminate" was
also shown in the February, 1989 decision of Judge Frederick Weisberg in the
case between Fr. Charles Curran and the Catholic University of America. Weisberg
denied Curran's lawsuit against his former employer for breach of contact,
ruling that although the requirement of the canonical mission was not made
explicit in Curran's contract with the University, when <Sapientia
Christiana> (Pope John Paul II's 1979 Apostolic Constitution on
Ecclesiastical Faculties and Universities) made the canonical mission an
explicit requirement, the judge noted, "it should have come as no surprise
to Professor Curran that he was expected to have one" (Larry Witham,
<Curran vs. Catholic University>, Edington-Rand, 1991, p. 265). The judge
ruled that Catholic University had the right to suspend a teacher whom it did
not see fit to teach Catholic theology, and recoiled from the thought that a
court would demand a religious school to have a particular individual teach
religion against the express will of the institution.

"Dropping The Label"

There exists sufficient legal precedent, then, for concluding that religious
institutions may govern themselves according to their own religious doctrines
and disciplines, and that the arguments regarding accreditation, academic
freedom, federal funding, institutional autonomy, and discrimination are easily
answered.

Yet it is obvious that such knowledge has not reached or has not persuaded
everyone in Catholic academe. Referring once again to the requirement of a
mandate for theologians, Sr. Karen M. Kennelly, CSJ, president of Mt. St. Mary's
College in Los Angeles, was quoted in a March 4, 1994 article in the
<National Catholic Reporter> as saying, "I think it's quite clear
that should bishops try to implement a mandate in the United Sates and. . . that
is taken seriously, they will lay themselves open to a lot of unpleasant
litigation and possibly end up being responsible for a lot of sincere Catholic
colleges and universities dropping the label."

It is clear, however, that the issue is not quite as simple as all that,
since what is involved here (i.e., the assets of Catholic colleges and
universities) is church property which, according to Canon Law (#1292) cannot be
alienated without the permission of the competent authority. In other words, if
some institutions were to become disillusioned with the Church and attempt to
drop their Catholic status and/or attempt to hand over control of the property
and philosophy of the institution to say, a lay board of trustees (which has
already happened in some places) that would be a clear violation of canon law.
And, since U.S. law recognizes the rights of religious institutions to govern
themselves, such an abandonment of an institution belonging to the Catholic
Church would not be recognized in civil courts, either.

The Way To Peace

Such is the diagnosis of the malaise currently hampering efforts at
episcopal-academia cooperation. What follows, then, is a proposed course of
action to alleviate these tensions.

First, after establishing a relationship of trust with the institution's
administration and faculty through open and honest communication, the bishop
would ask all the theology faculty to make a profession of faith, according to
the formula approved by the Apostolic See, in the presence of himself, the
Chancellor, or his delegate, as is currently prescribed in Canon 833.

If only some agree to make this profession of faith, then the bishop may
terminate the contracts of those individuals where appropriate and hire new
teachers in their stead. If none of the teachers agree to take the oath, and/or
if the institution itself is uncooperative, then the bishop may sue for
alienation of church property in a court of canon law (cf. Canon 1292). As a
last resort, the bishop may also refuse his permission to allow the institution
to call itself "Catholic" (cf. Canon 808).

This course of action would undoubtedly be perceived as unpopular, or even
unworkable by the power elites currently in control of Catholic academia. As we
have seen, however, the United States of America is still sufficiently free to
permit Catholic colleges and universities to be truly Catholic, subject in
certain areas to the rightful concerns of episcopal authority, without fear of a
loss of accreditation, authentic academic freedom, federal funding,
institutional autonomy, or of being sued for illegal discrimination.

Doing It Right

The case of the Notre Dame Apostolic Catechetical Institute in Alexandria,
Virginia, offers a clear proof of this and stands as a sign of hope for the
rejuvenation of Catholic higher education. Begun by Msgr. Eugene Kevane after
being driven out of the school of religious education at Catholic U in the early
'70s. NDI has been preparing religious and lay catechists for leadership
positions in parishes, schools, and dioceses for over 20 years. The faculty of
NDI all take the oath of fidelity to the Magisterium and boldly profess their
orthodoxy inside and outside of the classroom.

The most striking thing about NDI's success is that in December of 1994, they
were given full accreditation by the Southern Association of Colleges and
Schools, the nationally-recognized accrediting agency that accredits schools all
over the southeastern United States, including Georgetown and Duke. Dr. Stephen
Miletic, academic dean at NDI, noted that the representatives from SACS dealt
with the NDI staff in a professional manner and were very respectful of NDI's
mission. "SACS evaluates you on what you say you're going to do as an
institution. It then determines how well you actually do it." Miletic
mentioned that SACS asked him about academic freedom, to which Miletic
responded: "We guarantee the freedom of every teacher to teach Catholic
truth." Next question, please.

NDI is just one example of how the vision of John Paul II for Catholic higher
education can be successfully implemented in this country. <Ex Corde
Ecclesiae> is a much needed document that gives hope to all Catholics
concerned about fostering unity within the family of God on earth. If this
important charter lies unattended, and the crisis of authority present in
Catholic higher education goes unaddressed, millions of dollars from students,
parents, parishes, and dioceses will continue to go to institutions essentially
at war with the Church.

It is clear that the only group of people in this country with the power and
authority to do something about this problem is the bishops. First of all, lay
initiatives at comprehensive reform are simply not taken seriously. Second, Rome
clearly wants the bishops to act, and has paved the way for strong action in the
wake of the Curran case at Catholic University. Third, with the release of
<Ex Corde Ecclesiae> and the current favorable stance of U.S. law, the
bishops have only to pick up the ball and run with it. It is obvious that the
colleges will not steer themselves back into the Church, since many of them have
bought into the secular notion that fidelity to the Catholic faith is a
hindrance to the search for truth and worldly advancement. The bishops cannot
continue to subsidize a revolution within the very heart of the Church and
continue to hope the spiritual health of Catholics will improve. Nor can they
expect that these institutions, as they stand today, will be able to turn out
anything but thousands of young Catholics each year who are increasingly unable
to articulate the vision of the Catholic faith as it needs to be expressed as
humanity approaches the 21st century.

Taken from the February 1995 issue of "Fidelity" Magazine, 206
Marquette Avenue, South Bend, IN 46617.